Reunited 1974 Rocky Horror cast remember a rather special night

Hanging from scaffolding in a crumbling suburban theatre, minus knickers, is not the behaviour expected of an Adelaide convent girl. But that was one of the least outrageous acts performed by Kate Fitzpatrick and her fellow members of the original Australian cast of The Rocky Horror Show.

"I jumped to the left and my tits came out and I didn't have time to put them back," Fitzpatrick says. "It was a wardrobe malfunction multiplied by a million because they stayed out for the whole song and you had to be free enough not to try and stuff them back in. There wasn't much to stuff them back into anyway."

As Frank N. Furter in The Rocky Horror Show in 1974. "Reg Livermore is outrageously 'transexual'," wrote the Sydney Morning Herald.

Perhaps it is the lip-loosening effect of the prosecco poured into her glass by the waiters of Stefano Manfredi's Balla restaurant at The Star. Or the joy of seeing her fellow cast members from the original Australian production, which opened in April 1974, gathered together for the first time in four decades.

Ruffled: Reg Livermore now says a modern director wouldn't be happy with an actor taking over the show in the way that he did.Credit:Nic Walker

Before long, the 67-year-old Fitzpatrick, who played the Usherette and Magenta, is recalling her trip to a Kings Cross sex shop with director Jim Sharman and costume designer Sue Blane. "They put me in this cubicle and to this day I've never seen anything like the Polaroids that were on the wall," she says. "And so I put on this thing and I said, 'I can't come out', and they said, 'You have to'.

"I mean it was literally two bits of lace an inch wide, suspender belt and stockings. They gave me a chiffon scarf for the show and Craig McLachlan told me he saw it when he was at school and all he remembers is I had a bare bum."

Written by Richard O'Brien, the musical follows wholesome couple Brad and Janet who, stranded in a storm, seek help at a nearby castle. Instead of dialling for roadside assistance, they encounter transsexual alien Frank N. Furter, his household of vamps and tramps and an album's worth of hits.

Inspired by B-grade horror movies and '50s rock and roll, The Rocky Horror Show opened in London at the Royal Court's 63-seat Upstairs theatre in June 1973 before transferring twice to bigger venues.

"Trendy Londoners are queuing down the Kings Road, Chelsea, for tickets to the musical which won the Evening Standard drama critics' award for best musical of 1973-74," reported The Sydney Morning Herald in February 1974.

The musical had its American premiere in Los Angeles in March 1974, and one month later legendary promoter Harry M. Miller brought the show to Sydney.

The eight cast members from that show might jump to the left more gingerly these days, but they have lost none of the exuberance of their youth. Among the raucous laughter and ribald reminiscences, selfies are taken and grandchildren barely mentioned.

While some have kept in touch (these days by Facebook), Maureen Elkner, who played Rocky's libidinous assistant Columbia, says this is the first time in four decades that almost the entire cast has gathered together.

"It's heartwarming to know we're all survivors," she says. "Most of us are still performing and to be part of such an Australian icon, we're very proud of that."

McLachlan plays Frank N. Furter in the latest production of The Rocky Horror Show, which opens at the Sydney Lyric on April 15 – 23 years after he first donned the sweet transvestite's fishnets and corset.

But more than four decades ago, a pre-pubescent McLachlan was taken to the New Age Cinema (later The Valhalla) in inner-city Glebe by a cousin who was meant to be babysitting him. "So I got dragged along to this thing underage," McLachlan says. "How she convinced them to let me in? I had no idea what any of it meant except the fact that it was really loud and for a kid it was really scary because back in the day the theatre was like a demolition zone.

"It was insane. There was scaffolding everywhere, plaster coming off the wall."

Occupational health and safety, let alone age checks on minors, were unheard of in the early 1970s. In another sign of how times have changed, tickets ranged in price from $3.50 to $4.80, while the cast was paid between $100 and $400 a week.

McLachlan's fellow cast members are barely old enough to remember his first turn as Frank, let alone his stint as Henry on Neighbours or his band Check 1-2. But Angelique Cassimatis, who plays Columbia, says her mother saw the original Australian show.

"She loved it and she just kept telling me about this guy Reg Livermore," Cassimatis says.

The Sydney Morning Herald's Glitter Scene column of April 21, 1974, agreed. Beneath a story about Adelaide nun Sister Janet Mead selling more than 1 million records in the United States, Grant Thompson wrote: "Reg Livermore is outrageously 'transexual' [sic]."

Other Herald writers were shocked by the venue, which had rats on the architraves and rubble in the aisles. "Probably the most frightening part is walking into the New Art Cinema in Glebe," wrote Gillian Mayne. "Leering gorillas lead you to your seat, past prone bodies in the corridor and under gruesome dummies hanging from the ceiling."

Jane Harders, who landed the role of Janet after singing Leader of the Pack at her audition, says the ramshackle venue was chosen deliberately.

"Well, we needed an old place that looked like it had been invaded by this strange alien person," she says. "We walked into the theatre and thought, 'Oh God'. It was a bit of a hell hole."

Elkner says microphones on leads were tossed around the stage, sometimes hitting performers in the head or tangling between their legs. She lost a tooth after Sal Sharah (Riff Raff) accidentally sent her flying into the audience.

"Riff Raff used to lift Columbia over his back during the tap-dancing scene and one day he didn't catch me and I fell into the audience and broke my front tooth during the Time Warp," she says. "And there was blood streaming down my face but I kept on singing.

"I didn't have a tooth. It was knocked out right at the root. But everybody thought it was part of the show."

Despite Rocky Horror's notoriety, most of the Australian cast had no idea what they had signed up to perform.

"We had nothing," Elkner says. "The LP hadn't been released. It was all from scratch. We based our characters on what Jim directed us and our own imagination."

Elkner was cast on the strength of her Mae West impersonation, while John Paramor says he performed "some awful old song I always sung at auditions, but was cast as the wholesome Brad because of his outfit.

"[Sharman] told me later that when they saw me walking into the room in a coat my partner had given me – this wonderful houndstooth green coat – and Jim said to Roy Ritchie, the musical director, 'Here comes Brad'."

Paramor was in a production of Hamlet opposite John Bell when he found out his audition had been a success.

"Why do you want to do that for?" he recalls Bell asking him.

"I said I just want to do it because it's about sex and gender fluidity and …"

Paramor says his Hamlet co-star agreed "they were all wonderful things" even if the show was an unusual choice for a serious thespian.

Talent aside, Sharman selected a remarkably good-looking group of actors for his Antipodean version of Rocky Horror as Livermore's photographs of the cast reveal. Pointing to a photo of Livermore dressed in Frank N. Furter's signature fishnet stockings, Harders says: "Reg had the best legs. He probably still has. He might show them later."

Harders confesses she harboured doubts about her fellow performers: "I thought, I don't know about these people. They're probably heavily into drugs. But everyone was very nice and proper professional actors."

Her initial doubts were shared by promoter Harry M. Miller, according to David Cameron, who played Eddie and Dr Scott. "I remember at a rehearsal Harry had come in to talk to us. He looked at us, and we were a pretty disreputable-looking bunch, and he said, 'Jim tells me you're the f---in' best available. Well, you f---in' better be'."

They were undoubtably a far cry from the gym-toned cast led by the 49-year-old McLachlan, who still delights in his dancing pecs.

Matters bulked up for his role as Frank's ideal man, Rocky, with a Bullworker – a metal contraption to be squeezed in order to grow muscles.

"I also went to a herbalist in Chinatown," he says. "I went on ginseng, all sorts of things."

Livermore says he showed up to rehearsals after a holiday in Alice Springs spent drinking Cointreau. "When I got back, really hungover, [I thought] I better now start – because I have to get into these corsets – I better start taking those tablets that make you piss all the time," he says. "Anyway I didn't manage to lose very much. I did once the show was on, I'll tell you that."

Livermore says his transsexual protagonist was "underwritten" but was "just so fascinating, people deserved to know more about him". The gait and clipped delivery was inspired by Bette Davis, but Frank's ribald dialogue was often ad libbed by Livermore.

"These days if I'd been director or producer, I wouldn't have been very happy with Reg Livermore taking over the proceedings in the way he did," he says.

But the audience on opening night, including Livermore's mother Dorothy, lapped up his performance, drumming up the sound of a stampede with their feet to show their approval.

Of course, no one could predict the cult status the musical would achieve or that it would be staged four decade later by performers young enough to be the grandchildren of the original cast.

"You know, when you're an actor in a show, more often than not you're thinking about the next show," Livermore says.

He adds: "I loved it so much at the beginning that I thought I should be paying Harry M. Miller for the privilege of doing it. Six months down the track, I didn't think I was getting paid enough."

Alongside Tim Curry, Livermore is one of the iconic Frank N. Furters – a reputation that is richly deserved, according to Cameron. "That sort of transgender power Reg generated when he was younger, it's unbelievable. It's riveting. I would challenge any person who gets a full blast of that not to question their own sexuality.

"That really drove the show, it's really his show. We were encouraged to be more outrageous by Reg's performance. Reg was naturally outrageous."

Fitzpatrick says the Sydney version of Rocky Horror was ruder than what she had seen in London the previous year. "Ours was dirtier," she says. "It was louder, rougher, dirtier. They're English actors. They're a bit more refined."

Asked what they think of later productions, most of the original cast say the show is less raunchy and more of a museum piece. Back then, there was certainly no consideration given to safe sex, Cameron says. "In a sense you can say shows like Rocky Horror were innocent. We were dirty and gritty but we were innocent. AIDS hadn't hit."

Harders says some audience members expected the cast to be as outrageous as their characters: "There was a funny young man who worked in a morgue who brought us pictures of bodies as if we'd be interested."

Cameron, meanwhile, remembers Sydney identity Madam Lash, perched semi-naked on a motorbike, riding up Glebe Point Road with a convoy of bikers. Audiences at the Friday midnight show were often stranger than the characters on stage, he adds. "I use to peep through the curtain before the show and I'd think, 'Oh my gawd'. I always felt a little bit like an impostor."